Crossfire
by GhyllWyne
Summary: Mycroft Holmes and John Watson talk about Mary while they wait for Sherlock to come out of surgery. He did some serious damage to himself when he left the hospital to solve the mystery of Mary's past. This is a missing scene from "Simple Truths", which is itself a 'missing scenes' story from HLV.


Crossfire by Ghyllwyne

Summary: Mycroft Holmes and John Watson talk about Mary while they wait for Sherlock to come out of surgery. He did some serious damage to himself when he left the hospital to solve the mystery of Mary's past. This is a missing scene from "Simple Truths", which is itself a 'missing scenes' story from HLV.

"Mycroft, it's John."

"Did you find Sherlock? Is he all right?"

It was an unrealistic hope, given that he'd been far from all right when he'd slipped out of the hospital three hours ago. They had begun combing the city for him the moment John and Lestrade had found his vacant hospital bed. He wasn't even supposed to be standing unassisted, let alone heading off Christ-knew-where to do God-knew-bloody-what. His surgeon had been frankly amazed that his patient was able to tolerate unhooking his morphine drip for long enough to reach the door.

_*You have to find him quickly,*_ the doctor had told John. _*If he ends up back in surgery over this, please understand that his condition will be even more precarious than it was right after he was shot. He's used up his reserves.*_ Not to mention, John had added to himself, what little common sense he had to begin with.

"They just now took him to surgery," he answered Mycroft. "He collapsed at Baker Street."

The silence that followed was deafening.

"I will be there within the hour," Mycroft finally replied, then rang off without another word.

John recognized the anguish in Mycroft's icy tone, and it continued to surprise him that Sherlock was so convinced of his brother's indifference towards him. The truth was the complete opposite, and yet that laser-focused perceptive genius seemed to go blind when it came to Mycroft.

Just as it had done with Mary.

The thought sent another wave of pain crashing through his chest.

_*But, she wasn't supposed to be like that,_* he'd squeezed the words past the constriction in his throat, unbearable pain mixed with such black betrayal that he could barely breathe. _*Why is she like that?*_

_*Because... you chose her.*_

It had felt like an accusation, and he had responded accordingly. His fury was blinding, both to what Sherlock was saying, and to the increasing breathlessness that had been a silent scream for help from Sherlock's failing body. But John had been so utterly consumed by his own pain that he had pushed everything else aside. Sherlock was indestructible, and he would be fine. It was John whose heart was being torn from his chest in bloody pieces.

And Sherlock _*had*_ been fine, right up to the moment he'd collapsed. It had taken John and both medics, who had just arrived in response to Sherlock's call, to keep him from falling.

_*John, Magnusson is all that matters now,*_ Sherlock's rich baritone choked to a whisper as he gripped John's shoulder, clinging to consciousness. _*Trust Mary. She saved my life.*_

_*She shot you.*_ At that moment, he had hated her, and the devastation in her eyes had given him a brief sense of satisfaction.

And then Sherlock had collapsed, heart racing out of control as his blood pressure plunged, and there was no time to think of anything but getting him to emergency alive.

Mary had not even attempted to follow them downstairs, and right now he didn't even care where she was.

The ambulance ride had been a nightmare of deja vu, except this time, Sherlock was conscious and in so much pain that he could only gasp, eyes clenched tight and cheeks wet with tears. They had given him as much morphine as they dared, but it did nothing. When they reached the hospital, he had opened his eyes and said something that was too soft to be heard through the oxygen mask, but John knew what it was. He was saying good bye.

They had rushed him through the doors then as John stayed helplessly behind with his world crashing down around him.

Mycroft arrived precisely 57 minutes after John had called him. His expression was stony as he took the chair opposite John in the waiting room where they had sat much too recently.

"Has there been any word?"

John shook his head. "Nothing yet."

Mycroft nodded, then lowered his gaze to his hands clasped in his lap. He spoke again without looking up, his voice stretched tight with fury. "How could you allow this to happen?" Each word was a separate missile aimed straight for John's heart.

"Allow what?"

Mycroft looked at him with deadly calm. "My people have found that Sherlock called your mobile over two hours ago, and you spoke to him for eight minutes and forty seconds. Please explain to me why he wasn't back in hospital immediately."

"I tried. I couldn't even get him to tell me where he was. He sent a taxi to pick me up."

"And you just, what? Sipped tea for the next two hours until he had lost enough blood to guarantee a trip back to surgery?"

It was a ridiculous comment, completely out of character, and it made John sit back and take another look at him. Anguish, yes. Fury, of course. But there was something else going on here.

"He can be very convincing, Mycroft. You know that better than anyone. And he sounded fine over the phone. He said would come back to the hospital with me, but only after I listened to what he had to tell me."

"And did you?"

"Did I what?"

"Listen?"

They were beginning to attract the attention of people sitting nearby. It wasn't volume that was raising the alarm. John doubted their words were audible more than a few feet away. But the tension between them was palpable, and increasing.

"Excuse me, gentlemen."

John and Mycroft broke their locked gazes and found a portly retiree in a security uniform looking at them with concern.

"Yes, what is it?" Mycroft asked icily.

The guard seemed to wilt slightly. "Is there anything wrong?"

"Yes, there's something very wrong. My brother is in surgery struggling for his life for the second time in a week, and I'm dealing with the man who put him there."

John expected Mycroft to follow that with an accusing look in his direction, but it didn't happen. Instead, Mycroft's gaze was unfocused, like a man looking inward. And suddenly John put it together. It must have showed on his face, because Mycroft leaned back in his seat, his expression shifting subtly to caution. John had identified that unknown _something_ he'd felt from Mycroft. Not anguish or fury.

Guilt.

Mycroft wasn't saying that John had put Sherlock here. Mycroft was placing that responsibility upon himself.

John took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "_You knew._" He shook his head, not believing his own stupidity. "You _bloody bastard_, you knew about Mary, and you let me..." There were no words.

Of course, Mycroft would know about her. Mycroft knew everything about everyone who came in contact with his brother. He would have checked Mary's background as soon as Sherlock came back to London. With the resources of MI-6, he certainly would have found what Sherlock eventually turned up this evening in an hour on the Internet. Of course, John had never checked her out himself. Why would he? He had been lost in his grief over Sherlock's death when she had come into his life. She saved him from himself, and he fell in love with her because of it.

*_As soon as Sherlock came back to London._* Or before that? Well before that?

"You knew about Mary _*before*_ he came back, didn't you?"

Mycroft looked away, and John knew it was true.

"How long before? Mycroft?" John grabbed Mycroft's sleeve and gave jerked it to make him look at him. "How. Long?"

Mycroft sighed. "You're going to stumble onto the answer eventually, so allow me to save you some time," he said, and his voice had regained a hint of his customary derision. "I had you under surveillance because Sherlock made me give my word that you would be protected while he was away. So yes, I knew that there was more to her background than you were given to believe."

"And you didn't think to tell me."

"I determined that she was not a danger to you. Quite the opposite. You were a much greater danger to yourself without her." His gaze lost focus. "Sherlock would never have forgiven me if I had allowed you to destroy yourself. He would never have forgiven himself."

"Sherlock didn't know before tonight, then?" John didn't believe for a moment that he would have kept it from him, but he needed to hear it from Mycroft.

"I'm sure he concluded that she wasn't just your dutiful wife after she shot him in the chest, but no. I didn't tell him for the same reason I withheld it from you. I didn't believe she would pose a danger to him." His voice was so soft on his next words that John had to strain to hear them. "I was wrong."

There was no mistaking Mycroft's guilt now. John had come to know the feeling well over the past few hours. The woman he had loved more than life itself, the woman who was carrying his child, had aimed a silenced automatic at Sherlock's chest and pulled the trigger. Sherlock's belief that she had purposely missed was simply wrong, John was sure of that. Sherlock was either lying to himself, or lying to John to spare him. There was no more dangerous place she could have aimed. She had only missed his heart by a few centimeters. If you want to wound someone without killing them, you don't go for center mass. It was this, more than anything, that he could not get past.

Mycroft's guilt was justified, but so was his own.

"Mycroft," he began, tension ebbing from him on a rush of empathy. "I know that-"

Mycroft abruptly stood, looking at a point over John's head. John turned and saw a man he recognized as Sherlock's surgeon coming toward them. He was not smiling, and John's heart turned over. _*It's too soon. He can't be out of surgery.*_ He turned to face the inevitable.

"He made it through surgery," the doctor mercifully began, "but he is not out of danger."

Mycroft had sunk back into his seat at the doctor's first words. John felt like a man who had just slipped the hangman's noose.

The doctor took the seat next to John, turned toward both of them with his clasped hands dangling between his knees. "I had to repair most of his internal sutures, and it took four units of blood to bring his pressure up, but it's still not stable. His heart is suffering from the stress of two surgeries and massive blood loss. I have him on a low dosage of morphine to avoid lowering his blood pressure any further, so I'm afraid he's still in some pain. He's on meds to stabilize his heart and his pressure, but we're still walking a tightrope." He spread his hands. "All we can do is wait."

He stood. "He should be out of recovery in the next hour. I'll leave orders that he can have two visitors at a time in intensive care."

Neither of them spoke for a long moment after he left them. The tension wasn't gone, but it had a new focus.

Mycroft broke the silence first. "Sherlock would also never forgive me if I allowed you to destroy your marriage." He sighed. "If you want, I will locate your wife and have her brought her to be with you."

It was so clearly an apology, as well as an offer to surrender his place at Sherlock's bedside to the woman who had tried to kill him, that John was stunned.

He cleared his throat. "I'm not ready to see Mary, but I would appreciate it if you could make sure that she's safe," he said quietly.

Mycroft pulled out his mobile and stood. "Consider it done."

Slightly more than an hour later, they were back in Sherlock's original room in the intensive care suite. Mycroft insisted that John take the chair at his bedside.

"If he wakes to find me holding his hand, he'll think he's died and gone to hell," Mycroft said. "I'll be over here," and he slid the chair a few feet away by the window, but with a clear view of his brother.

It was hard to watch. John kept hold of Sherlock's hand, and he knew every time the pain crested. Sherlock's grip was weakened dramatically by the drugs and blood loss, but his long fingers would clamp down a second before it showed on his face. There was nothing John could do.

Mycroft was suffering right along with his brother, too. At one point, after a particularly intense wave that left Sherlock gasping, he stood up abruptly and left the room. A moment later, John heard voices down the hall. Mycroft was demanding to see the doctor.

"My brother is in terrible pain, and I demand that you help him."

John got up and went to intervene, but Mycroft was already heading back toward the room.

"Mycroft, why don't you take a break? Go get some coffee. Have a cigarette. I'll call you if anything changes."

Mycroft hesitated, his gaze fixed on the door where his brother was fighting for his life.

"Mycroft? I'm a doctor. I can deal with this."

Mycroft looked at him. "I can see your face quite clearly from my chair. You're not handling it any better than I am. Don't be condescending." He looked back toward the room. "However, I will take your advice. I do need to check how the rest of the world is faring in my absence."

When John returned to the room, he found Sherlock's eyes open wide and fixed on him. He rushed to his side. "Sherlock, I'm here. What do you need?"

Sherlock gripped his hand with surprising strength, but his voice was weak and raspy. "You...have got to keep...Mycroft... out of here."

"Sherlock, he's your brother. I know you don't believe it, but he loves you. I can't tell him-"

Sherlock clamped down on his hand. "I know that...he does. He..." He inhaled sharply as he rode out another wave of pain. "He can't watch this."

"I convinced him to take a break, but he's not going to stay away."

"You...have to. Worried about Mary."

=][

John straightened. "What are you saying? You're worried that Mycroft could harm her? That's ridiculous."

"No... it's..." Sherlock tried, but he'd already used up too much of his limited resources. "Please," was all he could manage. His eyes closed, and his grip on John's hand relaxed.

"Sherlock!" John panicked, but the monitors remained unchanged. No flatline. No arrhythmia. He was exhausted, not dead. "For the love of Christ, Sherlock, please don't do that again."

Sherlock was quiet for the next half hour, and John relaxed slightly. But with no immediate crisis to divert him, his thoughts returned to his wife.

Incredibly, he had already begun to wonder about her back at Baker Street. just before Sherlock had called him to Leinster Gardens. It was that damned chair. Why had Sherlock moved it back by the fire after he'd banished it to John's bedroom upstairs? He had to have done it after he snuck out of the hospital. Mrs. Hudson had not seen it there earlier in the day when she'd come to tidy up. And yet, when he and Lestrade had come to look for clues to where Sherlock might have gone, there it was. A signal that Sherlock expected him to return to Baker Street.

Then Mrs. Hudson had picked up his ringing phone, and Sherlock had asked him to get in the taxi that was sitting out front and come to him. John had spent the half hour it took to reach his destination, one which the cabbie had refused to divulge, in putting the pieces together.

Mary answering the phone that first night when he called her from the hospital, desperate to hear her voice and to tell her that his best friend was dying. She had sounded wide awake, and a moment later had yawned unconvincingly. He'd thought she was trying to stop him feeling guilty for waking her. He knew he hadn't said anything about Sherlock having been shot in the chest, and yet she had known later when she saw Sherlock in his hospital bed for the first time. Sherlock's bandages had been hidden by the sheet, and yet she had said something about his chest wound. He had missed the significance at the time. She could have heard it from Lestrade, or from one of the hospital staff, but he didn't think that now.

And the perfume Sherlock had detected in the air in Magnusson's office. Clair de la Lune. Mary's signature scent. And tonight, sitting on a table next to his chair in Baker Street, was a bottle of it. Sherlock did nothing without a purpose. Why had he positioned the chair and the perfume right there?

Most of all, when Sherlock had finally opened his eyes after the first surgery, his first word had been her name. He hadn't been lucid enough to know John was there, and yet he had struggled to get the word out. _*Mary*._

By the time he had gotten out of the cab at Leinster Gardens, he had nearly come to the belief that his wife had tried to kill his best friend, although it seemed utterly ridiculous. Impossible.

*When you eliminate the impossible, what remains is probably the truth.*

Convicted out of her own mouth. John had sat frozen with horror as he watched her in the half light. She thought she was talking to Sherlock, seated in the shadows, backlit to hide his features. Instead, she had unknowingly confessed her treachery to the father of her child, and broken his heart beyond all hope of repair.

He still loved her, but if Sherlock died, he would never forgive her.

"John."

Sherlock was awake, watching him.

"I won't ask how you feel, but I can tell you that you look a bit less like death warmed over." It was true. John scanned the monitors, and the readings bore out what he was seeing in Sherlock's face.

"What were you just thinking?" Sherlock asked, his voice still raspy, but definitely stronger.

John reached up and touched his cheek. "You need to save your strength. Try not to talk." He felt a rush of tenderness for his friend that put a knot in his throat.

"She didn't mean to kill me, John." He was already fading, but apparently determined to convince John.

"What are you, psychic?" He was only half-kidding. "Get some rest."

Sherlock's eyes were drifting shut. He opened them again with obvious effort. "You have to promise me."

John waited for him to complete the thought, but he seemed to have drifted off again. "Promise you what?"

"Promise you forgive her."

John didn't answer. He couldn't. Eyes still closed, Sherlock repeated his request. "You have to promise me, or I'll hold my breath." And he actually smiled. "And keep Mycroft in line until I can do it myself." The last word trailed off into a deep sigh.

John watched him for a few minutes longer. He was asleep.

Author's notes: This is actually a missing scene from my other 'missing scene' story, "Simple Truths". It's pretty clear that I loved HLV, or HFV as my brain keeps insisting on identifying it. My apologies to any medically-trained readers. I know zero about the consequences of getting shot where Sherlock was shot, or of running around hauling overstuffed chairs up a flight of steps a week later, but I it would be pleasant. I'm sure there are a few more missing scenes waiting in the wings for this episode. I promise to keep writing them down. Let me know if you would like to hear more. -GW


End file.
